For an instant I thought I could interpret the words. “Ardath, you bitch.” But that went away, chased by fear. Goblin appeared at the hospital, looked us over, and seemed relieved to find One-Eye there. He said nothing, and I got no chance to ask what he had been up to recently. He returned to the night, parting with a wave.
Silent appeared a few minutes later, looking grim. Silent, my partner in guilty knowledge, whom I had not seen in more than a year, whom I had missed during my visit to Duretile. He looked taller, leaner and bleaker than ever. He nodded, began talking rapidly in deaf speech. “There is a ship on the waterfront flying a red banner. Go there immediately.” “What?”
“Go to the ship with the red banner immediately. Stop only to inform others of the old Company. These are orders from the Captain. They are not to be disobeyed.” “One-Eye....” “I caught it, Croaker,” he said. “What the hell, hey,
Silent?”
Silent signed, “There will be trouble with the Taken. This ship will sail to Meadenvil, where loose ends must be tied off. Those who know too much must disappear. Come. We just gather the old brothers and go.”
There weren’t many old brothers around. One-Eye and I hurried around telling everyone we could find, and in fifteen minutes a crowd of us were headed toward the Port River bridge, one as baffled as another. I kept looking back. Elmo was inside the castle. Elmo, who was my best friend. Elmo, who might be taken by the Taken....
Chapter Thirty-Nine: ON THE RUN
Ninety-six men reported aboard, as ordered. A dozen were men for whom the order had not been meant, but who could not be sent away. Missing were a hundred brothers from the old days, before we crossed the Sea of Torments. Some had died on the slopes. Some were inside the castle. Some we hadn’t been able to find. But none of the missing were men who had dangerous knowledge, except Elmo and the Captain.
I was there. Silent, One-Eye and Goblin were there. The Lieutenant was there, more baffled than anyone else. Candy, Otto, Hagop.... The list goes on and on. They were all there.
But Elmo wasn’t, and the old man wasn’t, and there was a threat of mutiny when Silent passed the word to put out without them. “Orders,” was all he would say, and that in the finger speech many of the men could not follow, though we had been using it for years. It was a legacy Darling had left the Company, a mode of communication useful on the hunt or battlefield.
The moment the ship was under way, Silent produced a sealed letter marked with the Captain’s sign. Silent took the officers present into the cabin of the ship’s master. He instructed me to read the letter aloud.
“You were right about the Taken. Croaker,” I read. “They do suspect, and they do intend to move against the Company. I have done what I can to circumvent them by hiring a ship to take my most endangered brothers to safety. I will not be able to join you, as my absence would alert the Taken. Do not dawdle. I do not expect to last long once they discover your desertion. As you and Goblin can attest, no man hides from the Lady’s Eye.
“I do not know that flight will present much hope. They will hunt you, for they will get things from me unless I am quick on my feet. I know enough to set them on the trail....”
The Lieutenant interrupted. “What the hell is going on?” He knew there were secrets some of us shared, to which he was not privy. “I’d say we’re past playing games and keeping things from each other.”
I looked at Silent, said, “I think we should tell everybody, just so there’s a chance the knowledge won’t die.”
Silent nodded.
“Lieutenant, Darling is the White Rose.”
“What? But....”
“Yes. Silent and I have known since the battle at Charm. Raven figured it out first. That’s why he deserted. He wanted to get her as far from the Lady as he could. You know how much he loved her. I think a few others guessed too.’’
The announcement did not cause a stir. Only the Lieutenant was surprised. The others had suspected.
The Captain’s letter hadn’t much more to say. Farewells. A suggestion we elect the Lieutenant to replace him. And a final, private word to me.
“Circumstances seem to have dictated a shift to the option you mentioned, Croaker. Unless you can outrun the Taken back to the South.” I could hear the sardonic chuckle that went with the comment.
One-Eye wanted to know what had become of the Company treasure chest. Way, way back in our service to the Lady we had grabbed off a fortune in coin and gems. It had traveled with us through the years, through good times and bad-our final, secret insurance against tomorrow.
Silent told us it was up in Duretile with the old man. There had been no chance to get it out.
One-Eye broke down and wept. That chest meant more to him than all vicissitudes past, present or promised.
Goblin got down on him. Sparks flew. The Lieutenant was about to take a hand when someone shoved through the door. “You guys better come topside and see this.” He was gone before we could find out what he meant.
We hurried up to the main deck.
The ship was a good two miles down the Port, riding the current and tide. But the glow from the black castle illuminated both us and Juniper as brightly as a cloudy day.
The castle formed the base of a fountain of fire reaching miles into the sky. A vast figure twisted in the flames. Its lips moved. Long, slow words echoed down the Port. “Ardath. You bitch.” I had been right.
The figure’s hand rose slowly, lazily, pointed toward Duretile.
“They got enough bodies inside,” Goblin squeaked. “The old bastard is coming through.”
The men watched in rapt awe. So did I, able only to think we were lucky to escape in time. At the moment I felt nothing for the men we had left behind. I could think only of myself.
“There,” somebody said softly. “Oh, look there.”
A ball of light formed on Duretile’s wall. It swelled rapidly, shedding many colors. It was gorgeous, like a giant moon of stained glass rotating slowly. It was at least two hundred yards in diameter when it separated from Duretile and drifted toward the black castle. The figure there reached, grabbed at the globe, was unable to affect it.
I giggled.
“What’s so damned funny?” the Lieutenant demanded.
“Just thinking how the people of Juniper must feel, looking up at that. They’ve never seen sorcery.”
The stained glass ball rolled over and over. For a moment it presented a side I hadn’t noticed before. A side that was a face. The Lady’s face. Those great glassy eyes stared right into me, hurting. Without thinking I said, “I didn’t betray you. You betrayed me.”
Swear to the gods there was some form of communication. Something in the eyes said she had heard, and was pained by the accusation. Then the face rolled away, and I did not see it again.
The globe drifted into the fountain of fire. It vanished there. I thought I heard the long, slow voice say, “I have you, Ardath.”
“There. Look there,” the same man said, and we turned to Duretile. And upon the wall where the Lady had begun moving toward her husband there was another light. For a while I could not make out what was happening. It came our way, faltering, rising, falling.
“That’s the Lady’s carpet,” Silent signed. “I have seen it before.”
“But who?...” There was no one left who could fly one. The Taken were ail over at the black castle.
The thing began to move faster, converting rickety up-and-down into ever-increasing velocity. It came our way, faster and faster, dropping lower and lower.
“Somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing,” One-Eye opined. “Somebody who is going to get killed if....”
It came directly toward us, now not more than fifty feet off the water. The ship had begun the long turn which would take her around the last headland to the open sea. I said, “Maybe it was sent to hit us. Like a missile. To keep us from getting away.”
“No,” One-Eye said. “Carpets are too precious. Too hard to crea
te and maintain. And the Lady’s is the only one left. Destroy it and even she would have to walk home.”
The carpet was down to thirty feet, swelling rapidly, sending an audible murmur ahead. It must have been traveling a hundred fifty miles an hour.
Then it was on us, ripping through the rigging, brushing a mast, and spinning on to impact on the sound half a mile away. A gout of spray arose. The carpet skipped like a flat stone, hit again, bounced again, and smashed into the face of a cliff. The spell energies ruling the carpet degenerated in a violet flash.
And not a word was spoken by any member of the Company. For as that carpet had torn through the rigging, we had glimpsed the face of its rider.
The Captain.
Who knows what he was doing? Trying to join us? Probably. I suspect he went to the wall planning to disable the carpet so it could not be used to pursue us. Maybe he planned to throw himself off the wall afterward, to avoid being questioned later. And maybe he had seen the carpet in action often enough to have been tempted by the idea of using it himself.
No matter. He had succeeded. The carpet would not be used to chase us. He would not be exposed to the Eye.
But he had failed his personal goal. He had died in the North.
His flight and death distracted us while the ship moved down the channel till both Juniper and the north ridge dropped behind the headland. The fire over the black castle continued, its terrible flames extinguishing the stars, but it shrank slowly. Oncoming dawn lessened its brilliance. And when one great shriek rolled across the world, announcing someone’s defeat, we were unable to determine who had won.
For us the answer did not matter. We would be hunted by either the Lady or her long-buried spouse.
We reached the sea and turned south, with sailors still cursing as they replaced lines torn by the Captain’s passage. We of the Company remained very silent, scattered about the deck, alone with our thoughts. And only then did I begin to worry for comrades left behind.
We held a long service two days out. We mourned everyone left behind, but the Captain especially. Every survivor took a moment to eulogize him. He had been head of the family, patriarch, father to us all.
Chapter Forty: MEADENVIL: PATHFINDING
Fair weather and good winds carried us to Meadenvil in good time. The ship’s master was pleased. He had been well-paid beforehand for his trouble, but was eager to shed a manifest of such vile temper. We had not been the best of passengers. One-Eye was terrified of the sea, a grand victim of seasickness, and insisted everyone else be as scared and sick as he. He and Goblin never let up on one another, though the Lieutenant threatened to throw the pair of them to the sharks. The Lieutenant was in such a foul temper himself that they took him half seriously.
In accordance with the Captain’s wishes, we elected the Lieutenant our commander and Candy to become second. That position should have fallen to Elmo.... We did not call the Lieutenant Captain. That seemed silly with the outfit so diminished. There weren’t enough of us left to make a good street gang.
Last of the Free Companies of Khatovar. Four centuries of brotherhood and tradition reduced to this. A band on the run. It did not make sense. Did not seem right. The great deeds of our forebrethren deserved better of their successors. The treasure chest was lost, but the Annals themselves had, somehow, found their way aboard. I expect Silent brought them. For him they were almost as important as for me. The night before we entered Meadenvil harbor, I read to the troops, from the Book of Woeg, which chronicled the Company’s history after its defeat and near destruction in the fighting along the Bake, in Norssele. Only a hundred four men survived that time, and the Company had come back. They were not ready for it. The pain was too fresh. I gave it up halfway through.
Fresh. Meadenvil was refreshing. A real city, not a colorless berg like Juniper. We left the ship with little but our arms and what wealth we’d carried in Juniper. People watched us fearfully, and there was no little trepidation on our part, too, for we were not strong enough to make a show if the local Prince took exception to our presence. The three wizards were our greatest asset. The Lieutenant and Candy had hopes of using them to pull something that would provide the wherewithal to move on, aboard another ship, with further hopes of returning to lands we knew on the southern shore of the Sea of Torments. To do that, though, meant an eventual overland journey at least partly through lands belonging to the Lady. I thought we would be wiser to move down the coast, confuse our trail, and hook on with someone out here, at least till the Lady’s armies closed in. As they would someday.
The Lady. I kept thinking of the Lady. It was all too likely that her armies now owed allegiance to the Dominator. We located both Pawnbroker and Kingpin within hours of going ashore. Pawnbroker had arrived only two days before us, having faced unfavorable seas and winds during his journey. The Lieutenant started on Kingpin immediately. “Where the hell you been, boy?” It was a sure thing Kingpin had turned his assignment into an extended vacation. He was that sort. “You were supposed to come back when...”
“Couldn’t, sir. We’re witnesses in a murder case. Can’t leave town till after the trial.” “Murder case?”
“Sure. Raven’s dead. Pawn says you know that. Well, we fixed it so that Bullock guy took the rap. Only we’ve got to hang around and get him hanged.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“In jail.”
The Lieutenant reamed him good, cussing and fussing while passersby nervously eyed the hard guys abusing each other in a variety of mystery tongues.
I suggested, “We ought to get off the street. Keep a low profile. We got trouble enough without attracting attention. Lieutenant, if you don’t mind, I’d like a chat with Kingpin. Maybe these other guys can show you places to hole up. King, come with me. You, too.” I indicated Silent, Goblin and One-Eye.
“Where we going?” Kingpin asked. “You pick it. Someplace where we can talk. Serious like.”
“Right.” He led the way, setting a brisk pace, wanting to put distance between himself and the Lieutenant. “That really true? What happened up there? The Captain dead and everything?” “Too damned true.”
He shook his head, awed by the idea of the Company having been destroyed. Finally, he asked, “What do you want to know, Croaker?”
“Just everything you found out since you been here. Especially about Raven. But also about that guy Asa. And the tavern-keeper.”
“Shed? I saw him the other day. At least I think I did. Didn’t realize it was him till later. He was dressed different. Yeah. Pawn told me he got away. The Asa guy, too. Him I think I know where to find. The Shed guy, though.... Well, if you really want him, you’ll have to start looking where I thought I saw him.” “He see you?”
That idea caught Kingpin by surprise. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder. He isn’t the brightest fellow sometimes. “I don’t think so.”
We went into a tavern favored by foreign sailors. The customers were a polyglot lot and as ragged as we were. They spoke a dozen languages. We settled in at a table, used the language of the Jewel Cities. Kingpin did not speak it well, but understood it. I doubted that anyone else there could follow our discussion.
“Raven,” I said. “That’s what I want to know about, Kingpin.”
He told us a story which matched Asa’s closely, the edges being about as uneven as you would expect from someone who hadn’t been an eyewitness.
“You still think he faked it?” One-Eye asked.
“Yeah. It’s half hunch, but I think he did. Maybe when we go look the place over, I’ll change my mind. There a way you guys could tell if he’s in town?”
They put their heads together, returned a negative opinion. “Not without we had something that belonged to him to start with,” Goblin opined. “We don’t got that.”
“Kingpin. What about Darling? What about Raven’s ship?” “Huh?” “What happened to Darling after Raven supposedly died? What happened to his ship?’’
; “I don’t know about Darling. The ship is tied up down at its dock.”
We exchanged glances around the table. I said, “That ship gets visited if we have to fight our way aboard. Those papers I told you about. Asa couldn’t account for them. I want them to turn up. They’re the only thing we got that can get the Lady off our back.”
“If there is a Lady,” One-Eye said. “Won’t be much pumpkin if the Dominator broke through.”
“Don’t even think that.” For no sound reason I had convinced myself that the Lady had won. Mostly, it was wishful thinking, I’m sure. “Kingpin, we’re going to visit that ship tonight. What about Darling?”
“Like I said. I don’t know.”
“You were supposed to look out for her.”
“Yeah. But she kind of vanished.”
“Vanished? How?”
“Not how, Croaker,” One-Eye said, in response to vigorous signing from Silent. “How is irrelevant now. When.”
“All right. When, Kingpin?”
“I don’t know. Nobody’s seen her since the night before Raven died.”
“Bingo,” Goblin said in a soft, awed voice. “Damn your eyes, Croaker, your instincts were right.”
“What?” Kingpin asked.
“There’s no way she would have disappeared beforehand unless she knew something was going to happen.”
“Kingpin,” I said, “did you go look at the place they were staying? Inside, I mean.”
“Yeah. Somebody got there before me.”
“What?”
“The place was cleaned out. I asked the innkeeper. He said they didn’t move out. They was paid up for another month. That sounded to me like somebody knew about Raven getting croaked and decided to clean his place out. I figured it was that Asa. He disappeared right after.”
“What did you do then?”
“What? I figured you guys didn’t want Bullock back in Juniper, so we got him charged with Raven’s murder. There was plenty of witnesses besides us saw them fighting. Enough to maybe convince a court we really saw what we said.”